They say character is destiny, but they're not always right. Just look at actor and former bad boy Mark Wahlberg, 40.

Wahlberg grew up Irish American in the hardscrabble -- and heavily Irish -- Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. Back then he wasn't what you call a poster boy for traditional values.

In fact, by any yardstick, he was a major piece of work. By the age of 13 he was addicted to cocaine and by 15 he was throwing stones at black kids. At 16 he approached a middle aged Asian man in the street, knocking him unconscious with a wooden stick.

He later attacked another Asian man leaving him permanently blind in one eye. He then made a separate racist attack on a security guard. For his trouble he was sentenced to two years in jail, serving 45 days.

But his losing streak still wasn't over. By the age of 21 he fractured a neighbor’s jaw in an unprovoked attack.

That level of complete contempt for the welfare of other people is probably difficult to move beyond, but Wahlberg did. It wasn't, he admits himself, that he didn't know the difference between right and wrong -- in those days he just simply didn't care.

Nowadays he credits his parish priest Father James Flavin for providing him with the guidance to turn his life around. In the years since he's become an ardent Catholic who reportedly attends daily Mass. There is no believer more impassioned than a convert, they say.

But it's because of his tough as nails blue-collar background that Wahlberg is so believable in roles that see him return to the working class roots he actually sprang from.

In Contraband, which opens on Friday, he plays a former smuggler who is forced to make one last glory run to protect his family and pay off a dangerous drug debt. Although the set-up feels hugely formulaic, it's a credit to Wahlberg's acting skills that he makes much of what happens next look utterly convincing.

Wahlberg plays Chris Farraday, a former criminal mastermind who is now a devoted husband raising two boys with his gorgeous wife (Kate Beckinsale). But everything he has built up is suddenly threatened when his young brother-in-law Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) botches a drug deal. That leaves Chris as the only one with the skills to raise the kind of money his brother-in-law lost.

It's the kind of plan that looks good on paper, but of course it all starts to fall apart almost as soon as Chris commits to it. Shocking complications ensue, quickly putting Chris in way over his head, and making this film an at times unlikely star vehicle for a Hollywood A-Lister, which means Wahlberg deserves credit for committing to such startlingly dark material.

Contraband is based on Reykjavik-Rotterdam, a tense and critically celebrated 2008 thriller that provides the new film's story line. But instead of its original setting of Iceland, the newly re-imagined Contraband is set in Louisiana and Panama, and it has a authentic and gritty realism that is increasingly threatened by the superhero antics of its leading man.

Where Contraband eventually runs into trouble is predictable -- in that steep gulf between the criminal underworld and Hollywood's near religious belief in happy endings.

Which is not to say that Contraband isn't worth your time. On the contrary, the cinematography alone is worth the admission price.

Director Baltasar Kormakur knows every frame of this criminal alternate universe like he was born and raised in it. Kormakur also knows how to create dread and suspense and how to propel a film forward, pulling a terrific performance out of Wahlberg, who has been on a bit of a creative roll lately (his recent turns in The Fighter and The Departed have been equally fantastic).

But Contraband is a big budget thriller, not a mature adult drama, and Wahlberg and Kormakur have set out to entertain and create a white-knuckle thrill ride. The problem is in the process they have created a film that -- even though you may not see some of the shocking twists that lie ahead -- will still feel as familiar as a pair of old slippers.